famous Cuban ballerina, the founder of the Cuban ballet Alicia Alonso (Alicia Alonso, Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martinez del Hoyo) was born in Havana, Cuba, on December 21, 1921. Alicia was the youngest child among four children in her family. Her parents were from Spain. Antonio Martinez, Alicia Alonso's father, was an officer in the Cuban army, and his mother, Ernestina Oya, was a housewife. It was the time of pre-revolutionary Cuba.

Asilia Alonso started dancing at a fairly young age. She was so fascinated by dancing that it was the only activity that could make the girl distract from childish pranks. As soon as she heard the music, she immediately began to dance. Little Alicia dreamed of having long hair, so she put a towel on her head, imagined that it was her hair, and danced, danced ...

The future ballerina visited her first dance lesson in her life during her father's annual military assignment to Spain. At that time, Alicia's grandfather, who lived in Spain, suggested that his granddaughter get acquainted with local dances. Then the girl first met flamenco. At the age of eight, Alicia Alonso had already returned with her family to Cuba. Then, at the Sociedad Pro-Arte music school in Havana, she received her first ballet lesson. The understanding that ballet is the vocation of her life came to Alicia in 1930, while studying at a private ballet school, under the guidance of a Russian choreographer, in which her parents enrolled the girl. Even then, Alicia sets herself the goal of founding the National Ballet of Cuba. On December 29, 1931, at the age of ten, a young talented ballerina performed on the stage of the Havana theater. It was a production of Sleeping Beauty.

Pretty early, Alicia got acquainted with family life. The girl got married at the age of fifteen. Fernando Alonso, a Cuban dancer and ballet teacher, became her chosen one. In 1937, the young couple moved to New York with the intention of continuing their dance studies. There, Alicia managed to enter the School of American Ballet. At this school Alicia Alonso was fortunate to work with some of the best private classical ballet teachers in the world. She eagerly absorbed new information.

Already in 1938, the professional career of a ballerina began. This year, she managed to make her debut in such musical comedies as Great Lady, Stars in your eyes. In 1939, she was a principal dancer with the American ballet Caravan, which later became known as the New York City Ballet. During 1039-1940, Alicia took an active part in the creation of the American ballet theater(American Ballet Theatre), and three years later the ballerina became its leading artist.

The turning point in the life of the famous ballerina was the year 1941. Alicia Alonso was nineteen when she was diagnosed with retinal detachment in both eyes and she was temporarily blind. Alicia underwent three operations to restore her vision, because of this, she was bedridden for almost a year, and could not even turn her head. Doctors told the ballerina that her career was over and she would no longer be able to dance. But, despite the verdict and the inability to train, Alicia Alonso conducted training in her imagination. Every day, she replayed in her head the moves from big ballets like Giselle. And by the time her eyes healed, she already knew Giselle by heart. The ballerina loved dancing so much that she was able to transfer this knowledge to her body. Her body quickly recovered, and soon Alicia returned to ballet.

A breakthrough in the career of Alicia Alonso marked the 1943rd year. On November 2, 1943, the American Ballet Theater was to perform a performance of Giselle. There was almost no time left when the ballet learned that the British ballerina, performer leading role- Alicia Markova. Since a full house was expected, the impresario did not want to close the show and began to question all the dancers who would like to replace the ballerina. Everyone refused except Alicia Alonso. The ballerina dreamed of such a chance all her life and could not miss it. As a result, Alonso performed brilliantly and made such a splash that the role of "Giselle" was forever identified with the name of Alicia Alonso.

In 1948, Alicia returned to her homeland, where she, together with Alberto and Fernando Alonso, founded the national troupe "Alicia Alonso Ballet", which since 1959 became known as the "National Ballet of Cuba". Since that time, the ballerina has been torn between performances at the American Ballet Theater and work with her own troupe. In 1950, a ballet school was also organized. In 1956, the year was quite difficult. At this time, the political situation in Cuba became more and more unstable, and soon the country's government canceled funding for the ballet school. Then Alicia Alonso, at the invitation of the ballet soloist Rousse, moved to Monte Carlo.

The year 1957 gave the famous ballerina international fame. Alicia Alonso received an invitation to perform in the Soviet Union. Not a single Western dancer had the opportunity to get through the Iron Curtain. At that time, Alicia performed several times on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, as well as the Kirov Theater (now the Mariinsky) in St. Petersburg. From 1957 to 1958, the ballerina went on tour in various countries, such as Asia, the USA, Western Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia. And in 1959, after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro came to power, who offered Alicia his political and financial patronage. Then the ballerina returned to her homeland and founded the National Ballet of Cuba.

Alicia's last performance was at the age of seventy-five, in the ballet Butterfly, which she herself directed. Now she still directs the national ballet, educates a new generation of ballerinas, despite the fact that she hardly moves and sees almost nothing. This year the famous ballerina is going to celebrate her anniversary - Alicia will turn ninety years old.

Alicia Alonso's contribution to the development of Cuban ballet art

At the time when the ballerina Alicia Alonso began her career, Cuba was under the rule of Batista. Then, fighting for the independence of the country, few people were interested in art, and even more so the creation of a national ballet. There were no centuries-old ballet traditions, famous ballerinas, and what can I say - ballet schools and even a more or less suitable stage for performances. Despite this, Alicia Alonso was confident that she could achieve her goal - to create the National Ballet of Cuba. The ballerina was not afraid of difficulties, on the contrary, Alicia set herself intermediate goals that helped her achieve her plan.

Alicia Alonso not only pursued the goal of becoming a professional ballerina, finding funds and creating a national ballet, drawing the attention of the country's inhabitants to this art form, she also decided to benefit from this for society. Once a ballerina noticed that ballet helps to control the work of muscles, this inspired her to use dance as a means of treating people with asthma, epilepsy, physical disabilities that affect the psyche. In subsequent years, Alicia tried to discover new possibilities for influencing human health with the help of ballet.

Throughout her life, Alicia Alonso achieved her goals, despite the fact that she almost lost her sight in her youth, and even operations did not help to fully restore it. Performing almost blindly at the tenth International Ballet Festival in Havana, which took place in 1986, the ballerina again managed to surprise those present with her characteristic manner of dancing. During the thirteen days of the festival, Alicia performed several different roles. They were Juliet, the Merry Widow, Jeanne d'Arc, Medea...

It is fanatical performance that is the main secret of the ballerina's success. Alicia was able to prove to everyone, and first of all to herself, that the creative life of a dancer can last much longer than everyone used to think. By her own example, the ballerina showed that this can be achieved with the help of discipline and great willpower.

Throughout all creative life, the ballerina performed in almost sixty countries around the world. But she did not just perform and earn money, she gained experience from various dancers and ballet schools, studied, and then passed on her knowledge to her students. Over the years of work, based on the information collected, Alicia has developed a special method for training Cuban dancers, which takes into account the climate, as well as the characteristics of the physical and muscular structure of the body. This method allows you to prepare a ballet dancer in just seven years.

Alicia Alonso always took a responsible approach to the preparation for the performance, worked on creating the image of a certain character, tried to penetrate and understand him. So, for example, in preparation for the scene of madness in the production of "Giselle", the ballerina visited psychiatric hospitals, talked to doctors and observed the sick in order to portray this on stage as truthfully as possible. Also, thanks to such a deep and thorough approach to preparing the image, the ballerina managed to discover a new property of ballet, namely its ability to treat certain diseases.

Do not forget that Alicia Alonso created the national ballet of Cuba from scratch. He experienced different times, for example, in 1956, her ballet school was completely left without state funding, and the ballerina herself had to leave the country. But as soon as Fidel Castro came to power, he asked the famous ballerina to return to her homeland, and in addition allocated two hundred thousand dollars for the development of the national ballet theater. Now the National Ballet is working productively, it has a fairly large classical and modern repertoire. The ballet troupe performs not only in its own theater, but also often goes on tour abroad.

For her outstanding contribution to the art of dance, Alicia Alonso has been awarded various orders and prizes many times. So, within the eighteenth International Festival ballet, which took place in the capital of Cuba, the famous ballerina was awarded the Vaslav Nijinsky medal by the chairman of the International Dance Council at UNESCO, Douglas Blair. Alicia Alonso was awarded such an award for the development of high cultural traditions that the ballerina passes on to her pupils. In 2002, Alicia received the title of UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

Alonso's last performance in her own ballet "Butterfly" took place in 1995, when the ballerina turned 75 years old. Just two years before, she was still dancing in Giselle.

And now... Life goes on!

93-year-old almost blind Alonso continues to direct the National Ballet of Cuba (which, by the way, is one of the most respected schools of classical dance in the world), puts on new performances, and takes the troupe on tour.

And Alonso sometimes performs plastic sketches with his hands and feet without getting up from his wheelchair. “Now I dance with my hands,” she says. “Or rather, I dance with my heart. The dance lives in my body, and I can’t do anything about it.”

"Cube is lucky to have you, belonging to the world and already immortal in the history of our great art,” said the English critic Arnold Haskell about Alicia Alonso back in 1966.

Alicia Alonso (Spanish Alicia Alonso; nee Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martinez del Hoyo - Cuban ballerina, choreographer and teacher, creator of the National Ballet of Cuba (Spanish Ballet Nacional de Cuba)

Her first teacher at the ballet school was the Russian emigrant Nikolai Yavorsky. She first performed in a ballet production on December 29, 1931, during a demonstration concert by students of the ballet school of the Society for Musical Art. However, her first truly serious debut was the performance of the Blue Bird solo in the ballet Sleeping Beauty by P.I. Tchaikovsky, staged by N.P. Yavorsky on the stage of the Havana theater "Auditorium" on October 26, 1932.
At the age of fifteen, she married a Cuban dancer and ballet teacher Fernando Alonso (Spanish: Fernando Alonso Rayneri). Studied in New York and London. Among her teachers was the Russian dancer Alexandra Fedorova. In 1939-1940 she actively participated in the creation of the American Ballet Theatre. Since 1943 she became its leading artist.
On November 2, 1943, she replaced Alicia Markova in the role of Giselle, her world fame began with a triumph in this role. She has worked with Mikhail Fokin, George Balanchine, Leonid Myasin, Bronislava Nijinska and other renowned stage directors. Constantly performed together with Igor Yushkevich. Cuban postage stamp YtCU 1116 features Alicia Alonso as Giselle
In 1948, she created her own ballet company in Cuba, Alicia Alonso Ballet (Spanish Ballet Alicia Alonso), which later became the basis for the creation of the National Ballet of Cuba (Spanish Ballet Nacional de Cuba), danced in the Russian Ballet Monte Carlo. In 1957-1958 she performed on the stage of the Bolshoi and Kirov theatres. She danced in various roles of the classical ballet repertoire in theaters in Europe, Asia and America.
She was considered one of the most technical ballerinas in the world despite long-term vision problems, whose stage longevity became an example for subsequent generations of ballerinas.
Alicia's stage longevity and extraordinary fruitful career are truly rare in the history of world ballet.
In 1948 she founded the National Ballet of Cuba, which she heads to this day.

Representatives of the “old Russian school” had a great influence on the work of Alicia Alonso, the ballerina began with classes at the ballet school of the Havana Society of Musical Art under the direction of Nikolai Yavorsky, later her teachers were Anatoly Obukhov, Anatoly Wiltzak, Lyudmila Shollar and Pierre Vladimirov. Alonso danced in ballets by Mikhail Fokin, Leonid Myasin and George Balanchine. Alicia's first performance in the USSR took place on December 31, 1957 in Riga, and her debut on the stage of the Kirov Theater on January 7, 1958. IN Bolshoi Theater performed as Giselle with partner Vladlen Semyonov.
On August 2, 2011, a gala concert “Viva Alicia!” took place on the new stage of the Bolshoi Theater. in honor of the ballerina Alicia Alonso. The part of Carmen was performed by Svetlana Zakharova.
The concert program consisted of classical and contemporary choreography, which were performed by the soloists of the Cuban ballet Sadaise Arencibia, Anette Delgado, Yanela Piñera, Viensay Valdes, Spanish. Viengsay Valdés, Dani Hernandez, Alejandro Virelles, Osiel Gounod, Arian Molina - Cesare Pugni's "Great pas de quatre" (Jules Perro, Alicia Alonso), "Thunder and Lightning" to the music of Johann Strauss-son (chor. Eduardo Blanco) were shown ); "The Dying Swan" by Saint-Saens (modern production, modern - Michel Discombi); pas de quatre from the ballet "Coppelia" by Delibes (staged by A. Alonso); pas de deux from " swan lake”, “Magic Flute” by Drigo, “Don Quixote”, “Carmen Suite” and “Fiesta Crioli” - all edited by Alicia Alonso
According to V. V. Vasiliev, “the name of Alicia Alonso has already been inscribed in golden letters in the history of the world ballet... In Cuba, Alonso has become synonymous with the concept of “classical dance”, like Galina Ulanova in Russia.”

Ballet Nacional de Cuba is the first professional Cuban ballet company. Organized in 1948 under the name Alicia Alonso Ballet (from 1955 - Ballet of Cuba; from 1959 - modern name). The founders are Alicia (prima ballerina), Fernando (general director) and Alberto (artistic director) Alonso. From the 70s. general management is provided by Alicia Alonso.

Cuban ballet is indeed quite strong and relies on good school. In 50 years, the National Ballet of Cuba has managed to go the way that European and Russian ballet has been creating for centuries. Observing Cuban artists, one can conclude that the school places a lot of emphasis on stability and rotation. Ballerinas have developed a “strong toe”. And Cuban male dancers occupy one of the leading positions in the world. Let me name at least Carlos Acosta and Manuel Carreno.
Loipa Araujo is another gem of Cuban ballet. In 1956 she made her debut with the National Ballet of Cuba. Then she became a leading soloist, dancing many leading roles in both classical and national ballets. In our country, Loipa Araujo was recognized after her victories at International competitions in Varna and Moscow. Then she came on tour with the Cuban theater. Araujo also starred in the film-concert "Ballerina", dedicated to the work of Maya Plisetskaya, performing the role of Rock in the ballet "Carmen Suite". Let me remind you that this ballet was staged in 1967, first at the Bolshoi Theater specifically for Maya Plisetskaya, and in the same year it was transferred to Havana for Alicia Alonso.
Loipa Araujo worked with Roland Petit, with Maurice Béjart, and successfully performed in various theaters around the world. In general, it is absolutely not in vain that critics called her "orchid in the garden of the ballet"

Biography [ | ]

The youngest of four children, parents - immigrants from Spain, father - an army officer, the family belonged to the middle class. She began studying classical dance in June 1931 at the ballet school of the Society for Musical Art (Spanish: Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical) in Havana. Her first teacher was a Russian emigrant Nikolai Yavorsky. She first performed in a ballet production on December 29, 1931, during a demonstration concert by students of the ballet school of the Society for Musical Art. However, her first truly serious debut was the performance of the Blue Bird solo in the ballet Sleeping Beauty by P.I. Tchaikovsky, staged by N.P. Yavorsky on the stage of the Havana theater "Auditorium" on October 26, 1932.

At the age of fifteen, she married a Cuban dancer and ballet teacher (Spanish. Fernando Alonso Rayneri ). Studied in New York and London. Among her teachers was the Russian dancer Alexandra Fedorova. At the age of nineteen, she partially lost her sight, which later only worsened (to date, the ballerina has actually become blind). B - actively participated in the creation of the American Ballet Theatre. C became its leading artist.

Alicia's stage longevity and extraordinary fruitful career are truly rare in the history of world ballet.

Original text (Spanish)

Longevidad, prestigio y fecundidad, emerge en la historia del ballet mundial con la carrera más extraordinaria...

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)

In 1977, he filmed about a ballerina documentary Alicia (Spanish) Alicia) directed by Manuel Duchesne Kusan.

theater organizer[ | ]

The concert program consisted of pieces of classical and modern choreography, which were performed by the soloists of the Cuban ballet Sadayce Arencibia, Anette Delgado, Yanel Piñera, Viensay Valdez, Spanish. Viengsay Valdes , Dani Hernandez, Alejandro Virelles, Osiel Gounod, Arian Molina - Cesare Pugni's "Big pas de quatre" (Jules Perro, Alicia Alonso), "Thunder and Lightning" to the music of Johann Strauss-son (chorus Eduardo Blanco) were shown; "The Dying Swan" by Saint-Saens (modern production, modern - Michel Discombi); pas de quatre from the ballet "Coppelia" by Delibes (staged by A. Alonso); pas de deux from Swan Lake, Drigo's The Magic Flute, Don Quixote, Carmen Suite and Fiesta Crioli, all edited by Alicia Alonso.

According to V.V. Vasiliev, “The name of Alicia Alonso is already inscribed in golden letters in the history of the world ballet... In Cuba, Alonso has become synonymous with the concept of “classical dance”, like Galina Ulanova in Russia”.

Confession [ | ]

Literature [ | ]

• De Gamez T. Alicia Alonso at home and abroad. New York: Citadel Press, 1971
• Siegel B. Alicia Alonso: the story of a ballerina. New York: F. Warne, 1979
• Arnold S.M. Alicia Alonso: first lady of the ballet. New York: Walker and Co., 1993
• Maragoto Suarez J.M. Alicia Alonso La Habana: Editora Politica, 2009